James LuValle Award
The James LuValle Award was established by the CCE Community Programs Committee to recognize an individual's excellent service work in bringing a wide array of people together in working toward a common goal in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.**
The award is focused on the individual's dedication to creating an environment of inclusivity, is an agent of change, and has worked toward the advancement of community in CCE.
The award is $500 to support the honoree's CCE Community efforts.
Eligibility requirements: CCE graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and research staff.
Examples of qualifying activities: Community organizing, mentorship, allyship, creating, and implementing the advancement of community initiatives in CCE.
The James LuValle Award candidates are nominated by members of the CCE community.
** Caltech programming, support structures, awards and campus organizations are open to anyone in the campus community, regardless of race, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual identity, and/or any other protected characteristic.
Award Recipients
2025
- Emily Chen
- Dennis Ko
- Jordan Thompson
2024
- Melinda Chan
- RJ Chadha
- Kali Flesch
2023
- Levi Palmer
- Paresh Samantary
- Rebeccah Warmack
2022
- Reina Buenconsejo
- Trixia Buscagan
- David Cagan
- Karen Orta
- Kim Pham
- Hannah Szentkuti
James Ellis LuValle was born in San Antonio, TX in 1912. While in elementary school, his family relocated to Los Angeles where he eventually attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High School (Now re-named John H. Francis Polytechnic in Sun Valley but in LuValle's day was located on or near the current location of the LA Trade Technical College by the Convention Center). At LA Poly Dr. LuValle distinguished himself as an outstanding student and athlete, while working as a page for the Los Angeles Public Library. Dr. LuValle was a standout in track and field as well as football, and was offered athletic scholarships from both USC and Notre Dame, which he declined. Alternatively, he enrolled at UCLA in 1931 on a Regents Scholarship for academic excellence and again thrived as a student-athlete. He earned his B.A. degree Phi Beta Kappa in chemistry in 1936 and later that summer represented the USA at the Olympic Games in Berlin. These games were notoriously overseen by Adolf Hitler, but whose presence was overshadowed by a relatively small handful of black athletes from the US Track team including LuValle (bronze medal in the 400 m sprint) and especially his teammate Jesse Owens (winner of 4 Gold medals).
When LuValle returned stateside, he found that UCLA had started a master's degree program in chemistry and that he had been awarded an assistantship. His research focused on photochemistry and earned his degree in 1937. While at UCLA, in addition to his research, he founded the Graduate Student Association, an organization still prominent on the campus aimed at promoting the interests of all graduate students at UCLA.
With a desire to continue his education, he applied to doctoral programs at Wisconsin, Harvard, and Caltech, and decided to pursue his PhD with Linus Pauling here at Caltech, supported by both a teaching assistanceship and a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Pauling guided and mentored LuValle throughout his three-years of study devoted to a "theoretical and experimental attack on the problem of resonance in conjugated unsaturated organic molecules containing oxygen." In 1940, Dr. LuValle became not only the first African-American to earn a PhD in Chemistry at Caltech but the first black scientist to earn a Ph.D. from Caltech as a whole.
After graduation, Dr. LuValle worked on war time research, including a stint back at Caltech with Pauling. Following the war, Dr. LuValle entered academia at Fisk University, a Historically Black College in Nashville, TN, but apparently was disappointed in the relatively underdeveloped Chemistry department there, and after a short stay at Fisk, Dr. LuValle took a position at the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, NY, possibly the preeminent research location for photochemistry in the 20th century. After a series of appointments both in the private sector and in academia, he eventually took a position at Stanford as Director of Undergraduate Laboratories in the chemistry department. In 1987 Dr. LuValle was awarded the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award, the highest honor the Institute bestows upon a graduate.
Dr. LuValle passed away in 1993.